I think the founder of the advocacy group StudentsFirst a committed education reformer, determined that none of America's schoolchildren should be condemned to the soft bigotry of low expectations. StudentsFirst released a report last week in which it graded the 50 states and the District of Columbia (where Rhee previously served as chancellor of the city's public school system) based on the extent to which each had adopted reformist policies aimed at improving public education.

Eleven states received failing grades, including, not surprisingly, California. Yet California education officials dismissed the state's F grade, which Richard Zieger, Chief Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction, contemptuously declared it a "badge of honor," while blowing off StudentsFirst as "an organization that frankly makes its living by asserting that schools are failing."

Rhee took Zieger's remark in stride when I chatted with her last week. She contrasted it with the response of Massachusetts lawmakers Russell Holmes and Daniel Winslow to the D grade the state received from StudentsFirst, which is at odds with other reports that rank the Bay State's among the nation's best.

Reps. Holmes and Winslow "didn't get their panties in a bunch," Rhee noted, but viewed the report card as encouragement to the state's education officials "not to rest on our laurels."

Meanwhile, here in California, the state education officials have no laurels to rest upon.

Not when less than half of California students are proficient in English-Language Arts by the time they reach the 11th grade, according to results of the 2012 California Standards Test. Less than half of 11th graders were proficient in high school math.

That explains why, by the time most California youngsters reach 12th grade, little more than a quarter manage to pass the state's high school exit exam in math, and little more than a quarter the state exit exam for English-Language Arts.

Only in the eyes of state education officials with blinders on could such lamentable performance by California students be considered anything other than prima facie evidence that the state's public schools truly are failing the children entrusted to them.

Michelle Rhee empathizes with parents whose kids are mired in floundering public schools. "No child left behind" is not just a catch phrase to her. It's a mission.

StudentsFirst's State Policy Report Card actually does not present a state-by-state assessment of school quality (not withstanding Zieger's insinuation that Rhee's group is all about "asserting that schools are failing"); nor teacher performance or student achievement.

It focuses, instead, on the policy environments that affect those outcomes in California, the 49 other states and D.C.

The states that earned the highest grades by StudentsFirst's reckoning, were those that have done away with old policies that "obstruct progress and fail to help children learn" in favor new policies that "emphasize high standards, robust educational options for families, transparency and accountability."

Zieger contended that StudentsFirst "has focused on an extremely narrow, unproven method that they think will improve teaching." He added, "We just flat out disagree with them."

Rhee countered, "To say we don't have proof of these things is patently false."

And she pointed to a major new study released last week by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which confirms the case made by StudentsFirst – and disputed by the California Teachers Association, among others – that student test scores can identify effective teachers.

Basing teacher pay on student performance, including test scores (rather than seniority or whether or not a teacher has a master's degree) and making student growth a significant factor in determining teacher effectiveness are among the 24 policy objectives that make up the StudentsFirst agenda.

StudentsFirst also thinks parents need the information to make informed decisions on behalf of their kids. It urges school districts to make individual teacher evaluations available to parents and to inform parents when their child is assigned to a teacher rated "ineffective."

Rhee's group supports public charter schools and opportunity scholarship programs. It also advocates a "parent trigger" policy, such as the one enacted by California's Legislature, which empowers parents to takeover management of persistently low-performing schools.

StudentsFirst gives high marks to states that provide school districts – and schools within those districts – the flexibility they need to best serve the students in their charge, while also lauding states that allow flexibility in how schools are governed, so that changes can be made when districts and schools fail to meet objectives.

Michelle Rhee is all about shaking up the status quo for the benefit of the nation's schoolchildren, all too many of whom continue to be undereducated in states like California.

Rather than attack the education reformer and her organization, states ought to work with her and StudentsFirst to implement reforms.

These reforms will improve the quality of education not just by the sons and daughters of the better off, but also by the offspring of the least among us.

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